For quite some time, I have been saving all kinds of useful bits and pieces of MAXScript code and other interesting technical stuff to my MAXScript “scrapbook” on hard disk (simply a folder with lots of small, useful files). I slowly come to think that something like that could be useful for others and make for a nice website. Now I wonder whether there are other MAXScripters that would be interested, too.
CGTalk is really great for questions, discussions etc. but I find it rather suboptimal for keeping things for later reference. So I am thinking of a slightly different website that explicitly allows storing useful MAXScript code (not entire projects) for later reference, with a subsection per item to discuss it. A bit like an online cook book that would also include full credits of the original author and maybe even a ranking scheme to identify particularily useful contributions. Ideally, people would take solutions they have read on CGTalk and which they consider useful for more than one occasion, and transfer the code/information to that new website with a link to the CGTalk thread.
Each submission would consist of code, description, author, weblink, catgeroy, keywords/tags and a discussion section.
Is this something others would be interested in as well, and maybe even contribute to?
And has anyone got an idea how to implement such a website without starting from scratch?
Thanks for any comments
– MartinB
There is a Wiki based site just for this Martin, problem is I can’t come up with the name of it right now. Any one remember what it is?
Well I’ve never heard of one… if anyone knows what it is, please let us know!
Thanks guys!
I have looked at tech-artist.org before, but IMvHO a Wiki is not the optimal format for such a thing. I am more thinking of a structure like scriptspot.com, but not for complete scripts but for code snippets. Other than that, scriptspot has all I want: categories, tags, comments, links, authors, ranking system.
Maybe I shoud contact Chris Grant and ask him whether he could host such a thing.
What do you think, is this something of general interest to MAXScripters? Are there other websites for other programming languanges that provide a similar service? Any pointers welcome.
– MartinB
Thanks for the plugs guys.
Hi Martin,
I think what you’re describing is like a ‘cookbook’ site, such as this: http://code.activestate.com/recipes/ ? No site for it exists- the closeset is probably scriptspot- but it has substantial differences as well I think.
Anyway: First, I’m not sure I agree a Wiki isn’t the right spot for code snippets. It provides easy searching, editing, fixing, improvements, etc., all of which code snippets benefit from, whereas larger scripts do not. Who wants to peel over lots of mediocre source code? On the other hand, people have no problem re-writing or reformatting or improving those little snippets they find. I’ve made countless generalized functions off the code snippets I’ve found here… I think a Wiki would be a much better format than download.
Second is not really related to the Wiki but may be of interest. We’ve been working on a system for distributing community scripts over at TAO. Basically, it is an online repository any user can set up via the forums, and anyone can download the files in any public repository. It is meant to meet two goals: first, to provide a very easy way for technical artists to set up a versioning system, without having to set up their own SVN server or whatnot. The second is probably of more interest to you- We are putting together a whole bundle of ‘community functions’, which are basically structs of common similar functions, many of which have been adopted from the members of this forum. I’ve been working on this for a while, though not as hard as I should have (well we just recently announced SWTOR so I was working some overtime)- actually I just have a bit of documentation and testing left, I’ve set a goal to get it done by the end of November and I’m on track for that. The actual forum software for this has been done for a little while already but I’m waiting on my sysadmin to have some time when we roll it out, to be able to quickly fix bugs.
We’re trying to do some interesting things and turn the ‘community’ into more than a web forum, and a site we download scripts at. Right now the virtual space is as much a hurdle and impediment towards cooperation and codevelopment as it is a benefit. There is so much untapped potential. The biggest hurdle, I find, is not finding time, but motivation and purpose. I want these initiatives and projects to be successful, but the success is determined by how many people are impacted by it- and people will only be impacted by it if people use it. It is difficult to run a Wiki if no one else edits it, not because you can’t fill up content (well that too), but because it feels like there is no point.
If either of these ideas appeal to you, or you think you’d like to try an alternative, I urge you to contact me about it. If it would require custom software, it is definitely possible, as long as you made a commitment to support it (web programmer is not volunteer). Actually, if it had the proper support and nurturing, a cookbook area (integrated into the forums, probably, like our Repositories and eventually the Wiki is/will be) could probably be quite useful. We have some Python recipes on the Wiki but nothing really formal. We can do things to improve the community, like you are describing; but we need to be smart about it, and work together towards it.
Yeah, that’s it, pretty much. I had envisioned a different interface, but in terms of functionality, that is pretty close. Thanks for the link!
I did not know the term ‘code cookbook’ and ‘recipe’ is quite commonly used. That is exactly what I was thinking of, for MAXScript.
I agree about the ease of editing in a Wiki, but what I do not like about a Wiki is the lack of organization and metadata/tags. Also, a Wiki enforces basically no document structure whatsoever for the content, so people could basically dump whatever they feel appropriate, and then a fair amount of editorial work is needed. I would rather imagine something that is more database-driven, therefore my reference to scriptspot.com
In principle, such a thing could also be added to cgsociety.org as a tool to preserve the most useful bits and pieces of the posts.
Sounds like a community-generated library for commonly used functions in MAXScript? If so, that is indeed interesting.
Not sure I understand why you need forum software for such a thing? Maybe I haven’t understood yet what you’re up to?
I can fully understand and sympathize with it, after all, I was hoping that more people than me would actually contribute to the mental ray cookbook wiki I started a while ago at http://mymentalray.com/wiki/index.php/Mental_ray_cookbook
That sounds definitely interesting, and we should talk about it!
Cheers
– MartinB
Thats the one, thanks Bobo. Martin, I think that a Wiki might be the better choice here as others could post like code along side yours and people could pick and choose what works best for them. I can’t imagine some one else having to go through all my code snippets, I’m sure it looks like yours just a little less commented. Hundreds of scripts and test lines for it. I like the idea of people being able to comment it on line and update those comments.
Just found this site, http://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:MAXScript
Might be interesting to you, Martin. It’s wiki based, so you can add/edit things.
I doubt they want all kinds of little code there, but you should be able to find/add solutions for general problems there.
Thanks for the links, Martijn, looks interesting!
Code Snippets looks also interesting, thank you Dave. I’ll take a closer look soon.
Glad to see some more people interested in this. I haven’t had time to look into this in the last weeks, but I definitely would like to see such a repository, somewhere.
Ideally, this would be integrated into cgsociety, so we could embed the snippets in the threads and still have them available somewhere centrally.
– MartinB
Hey Rob, always interested in what you guys are cooking up over there. solid site btw
What would be the thoughts on using a third party site that's already set up? Possibly something like snipplr? [ http://snipplr.com/ ]( http://snipplr.com/) Never know how long a third party will BE around, but they have been around for a few years now already.
its pretty open in terms of [api, based on xml-rpc]( http://snipplr.com/blog/2006/07/06/snipplr-api/), (They're basically just a wordpress blog, with all the tools associated with posting to that..) would that open us up into possibly making an in-max script to submit snips? they're open to adding [new languages]( http://snipplr.com/faq/), and use a [Geishi syntax hylighting]( http://www.buchhofer.com/upload/files/Scripts/GEiSHI_maxscriptSyntax.zip) which chris evans had made (Can't seem to find his at the moment, so linked my slightly edited white version.)
I personally think if posting code snippets (with tagging/searching) up is as easy as posting your average blog post we may get a bit more activity than with the average wiki, where its unclear to the semi casual contributor where to really try and help out.
Especially since it looks like you can RSS individual categories/tags too… So, assuming said hypothetical maxscript interface added a tag “maxscript” as a base, it would be fairly accessible?
I also think this is a great idea! My code site (as opposed to my portfolio) uses Wordpress to do pretty much the same thing.
http://www.keyframesandcode.com/code/
Specific to my blog I have:
[ul]
[li]Hierarchical categories for scripts eg Development > MaxScript > Animation[/li][li]each entry has an “intro” meta information that gets picked up by the main index page[/li][li]A custom index page that lists scripts hierarchically by language > category, with title and “intro” information[/li][/ul]Of course there’s also
[ul]
[li]Search[/li][li]Comments[/li][li]Pingbacks[/li][li]Gravatars[/li][li]Meta data[/li][li]Authors[/li][li]Plugins[/li][/ul]A basic Wordpress site can be set un in about 20 minutes. A suitable theme can be searched for and added in another 20, and basic settings might take another 20. So within an hour you can be on the web and ready to go!
I also wrote a bunch of stuff clientside to the slog of publishing everything a lot easier. For example, I placed all my script metadata (name, version, categories, etc) in an Excel table which I then wrote a PHP script to import all that into the database as well as create stub entries.
It should be pretty easy to do the same thing with a directory of scripts and have them automatically placed into stub posts, or as Dave said, write something to do it from max (but I’m especially fond of the power and ease of Excel – you could just add paths references for example).
I must admit I do like the Wiki ethos, but my experience of using them has been somewhat arduous – they’re just too technical! Blogs are just so easy – fire and forget. Would have to look into Power Users and that sort of thing too, as it’s not nice when a blog becomes a soup.
Sorry – double post